


Ashes

by LLReid



Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novel)
Genre: Ancient Egypt, Angst, Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, Feminism, Fluff, Vampire Queens, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22311559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: After more than two thousand years Kamilah still misses her brother more than anything.Fic inspired by the song ‘Ashes’ by Céline Dion.~~~~~“You are not what you've done. Who you are right now, this moment, is who you choose to be. Everyone makes mistakes, Kamilah. Mortal, vampire, it doesn’t matter...good people make bad choices sometimes and genuinely bad people don’t feel guilt for their actions. You’ve made mistakes and you will make more mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won't be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I don't need to tell you that you can be better than all of the bad things that you’ve done — you already know you can.”
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Swann, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	Ashes

“Anastasia, did the clanless not give us three pounds of candy as a housewarming gift?”

The younger vampire smiled impishly at Kamilah from across the room as she refilled her wine glass, her smile the brightest facet of the night. With her, night was no longer something to endure until dawn. It felt more like an element, like wind or fire. Darkness truly was its own kingdom; it moved to its own laws, and many living things dwelled in it. 

"You ate half the bag!"

"In my defence, I didn’t know I was supposed to save it.”

"I would have liked some!"

"You never told me that."

"Because I didn't expect you to consume all of it in only a few hours!"

“Well, that just shows poor judgement on your part, doesn't it?” 

“You are a danger to society.”

“Funnily enough, I’m aware of that.”

“You’re also impossible,” Kamilah countered.

“Impossible, endearing. Synonyms, really.”

With each day that Kamilah had spent with her, she felt the barriers around her heart melting away. She let them melt. There was nobody else who could make her smile like she did, even if she had thoughtlessly consumed enough sugar that she would likely have fallen into a coma and died had she still been mortal. It was an odd thing, happiness. Some people took their happiness from gold. Or pearls. And some people, the far more fortunate, took their happiness from good company.

“I don’t like children in the slightest but I will admit that you were a particularly cute one,” Kamilah concluded with a pointed sip of the sweet Prosecco that she had been nursing for the better part of an hour. She hadn’t imagined that she was the sort to become so engrossed in old photographs that she’d completely forget about a glass of wine, yet that was precisely what had happened. 

When Kamilah and Anastasia had made a plan for how they’d approach moving in together, neither of them had expected that Kamilah would be the one making the whole process take much longer than necessary. Anastasia, being far younger and more excitable and barely used to her vampire senses, was usually so distractible that Kamilah and Adrian had both joked about slipping Adderall in her drinks to keep her focused. Yet the pup had completely finished hanging her clothes away and setting up her cosmetic collection on the bathroom vanity beside Kamilah’s, and Kamilah hadn’t made much progress at all with putting away the books that she had brought. 

It wasn’t entirely her fault, though, as having never actually seen any of Anastasia’s childhood pictures it had been quite the shock to open up an album and find herself absolutely overflowing with moments that she hadn’t been around to witness. There was something poetic about it, to see the whole life of the woman who had made her want to live. Not survive; not exist. Live.

“I looked like a cartoon character,” the younger woman laughed as she sat down on the couch beside her. “My eyes were so big they were disproportionate to the rest of my features until puberty.”

“They were not. Most people’s looks leave a lot to be desired before their late teens but look at you, you were a cute baby who turned into a very pretty child. Lysimachus and I both looked like Goblins until we turned eighteen.”

Tentatively, she brushed her fingertips across one of the photographs. Smiling back at her was a young girl playing in the woods who couldn’t have been more than eight years old, the ends of her thick ginger hair just brushing her shoulders and her icy blue eyes strikingly vibrant amongst the array of greenery and the overcast sky. Anastasia had changed a lot in the fourteen years since the image was taken, yet not so much that she was unrecognisable. The mischievous smile was one that Kamilah saw multiple times every single day, and her eyes still twinkled the very same way. 

Anastasia’s laughter drew her attention away from the photo and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling at the sound of her happiness. “Kamilah, have you seen yourself? There is no way you were ever an ugly duckling.”

“I was a particularly rambunctious child, so my dresses were always either torn or stained and my hair was so wild that the merchants who passed through Alexandria on their way to Memphis frequently mistook me for a beggar. It used to insult me but in hindsight I can understand why I might’ve come across that way.” She took another sip of her wine. “My inability to keep myself properly put together drove my parents mad.”

“It did?”

“Most of my behaviours and mannerisms were more appropriate for boys at the time, which meant that my father was rarely ever pleased with me and my mother existed in a permanent state of exasperation.” She couldn’t help but smile a little at the memory, as it used to thrill her to no end to purposely annoy them. It was such a wonderful time in her life, even in its strangeness and sadness — and life wasn’t the same now. It was absolutely wonderful, but it wasn’t the same. “Even as a little girl I knew that I wasn’t interested in a domestic life as some wealthy man’s wife that my social status would earn me...it was one of the few things Cleopatra and I had in common. Lysimachus and I would be taught separately but every night he would teach me everything that his tutors taught him, so I learned much more than the other girls that I grew up with. We wanted to be adventurers.”

“Adventurers?”

“Mhm. We were going to get a boat and sail the world, he always used to tell me. We had no place in the world, he said once, therefore we could have gone everywhere.” She sighed. “When he was teaching me, he’d often say things like that to stop me from getting too frustrated when I didn’t pick something up immediately. As smart as he was, I don’t think he could’ve known that it’s only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”

“What did he teach you?”

“Beyond the fact that libraries were full of ideas and perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons, he taught me everything that was worthwhile learning. Geometry, geography, cartography, astronomy, history, and he taught me to read, write, and speak; Aramaic, Syriac, Parthian, Latin, Median, and the Egyptian language—“

“That’s right!,” Anastasia interjected, excitedly. “You’re from the time of the Ptolemaic pharaohs! Your native language must be Koine Greek, right?”

At that, Kamilah couldn’t help but puff up a little with pride. Her eyes filled with light, like sea-polished amber, and her throat constricted suddenly, too full of words. Not once in her whole entire life had anyone figured that out. Not once had she ever been asked that question. Even Adrian, as smart and conscientious as he was, hadn’t ever figured that out. “You are magnificent.”

“God, I know,” Anastasia smirked.

“Despite spending my entire life floating between Alexandria and Memphis I didn’t actually develop much fluency in the Egyptian language until I was a teenager...and regardless of what the history books will tell you, Cleopatra only ever learned it because she wanted to one up me. Which she never did, I might add. I was always more academically inclined.”

“I don’t think anyone could ever one up you, Kami.”

“Nor do I, but that impetuous cousin of mine certainly did try...and earned herself a grossly inaccurate biopic where she was played by Elizabeth Taylor out of it. Seems like karma if you ask me.” She smiled, wickedly. “How quickly the mighty fall.”

Both of them started laughing into their glasses of wine at that. It was difficult not to laugh like a teenager when she thought of how her cousin would’ve reacted to the film, had she been around to see it. It put an end to the fierce competition that they’d had in their youth and adolescence, allowing Kamilah to reign supreme for eternity. 

Her eyes drifted back to the photographs in front of her, back to the doll-like face of the little eight year old redheaded girl playing in the woods. It was difficult to believe that only fourteen years had passed since that moment and more than two thousand years had passed since Kamilah had been that age. Their childhoods and adolescences bore almost no similarities, and yet Kamilah had never been closer to another person, she’d never ‘clicked’ with another the way that she had Anastasia...it was almost as if she’d known her for her entire life.

“I wish I had pictures of him,” she murmured. “Of Lysimachus...and perhaps even Cleopatra. The only place either of them exist now is my memories.”

“You miss them more than you let on, don’t you?”

She took a sip of wine and nodded, tightly. “I have nightmares about him sometimes. He stares into the sky, his eyes absent and empty, an expression that branded its horrible meaning into my mind long, long ago. A candle without a spark, a sky without a sun, the look people get when they stop being people and start being bodies.”

The truth was that death was her curse and her gift, and death had been her one good friend who had been there through all of the long, long years that she had been wandering the world aimlessly. On one hand she wanted to stop playing among her ghosts — part of her mind screamed that it was stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. She was trying to lay them to rest, not stir them up, yet she was equally eager to drag out all the sad bones of her history and make them dance once again.

Two thousand years had done little to cure the grief that made her feel like she was drowning when she thought of her twin brother leaving for war, and breaking a promise to her for the first time in his life when he failed to return to her. There were even still times that she turned to speak to him, only for him not to be there. She’d told herself it was a blessing, for centuries that was how she’d survived, telling herself how disgusted he would’ve been had he witnessed who she’d become at Gaius’ side. Even Cleopatra, as fickle and spoiled as she could’ve been at times, would’ve been well and truly horrified at all the things Kamilah had done...at who she’d been. Yet the excuses she’d used to avoid her grief no longer worked now that she’d devoted more than a century to righting her wrongs and becoming the woman that she might’ve been had Gaius Augustine never crossed her path. 

Now she was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal. She was a survivor, and she was strong. Now she knew she would never be weak, or helpless again. She would not, could not be broken. Caged. She knew now that until a person finds something to fight for, they will settle for something to fight against. That was precisely what she had done, again and again. She had let go, lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and incomplete she had eventually found freedom. In some sick and twisted way losing all hope had been her ticket to freedom, and all of her real discoveries had come from chaos, from going to the place that was wrong and stupid and utterly foolish. Kamilah, like many people, had fallen so in love with her pain, she’d been incapable of leaving it behind for a long time — she’d trapped herself.

“Even now, the not knowing exactly what happened to him is difficult to bear,” she confessed as she sat aside the photo album and reached for Anastasia’s hand. “When he didn’t come home I asked everyone who’d fought with him and no one could tell me anything. I don’t even know what happened to his remains. He left. Just like that. No final goodbye, no last, lingering glance. Like we’d never grown together or loved each other more than anything at all.”

The younger vampire squeezed her hand and soothingly stroked her thumb down the length of Kamilah’s. “I might never have met him but based on everything that you’ve told me about him, I know that he’d be proud of you. Remember what he used to tell you when you were about to get yourself into trouble: ‘good thoughts, good words, good deeds.’ You live up to that mantra every day and now you’re the example to follow, you’re the one using it to stop me and Lily accidentally getting ourselves killed...again.”

“It still baffles me that you can see me as someone worth loving after finding out who I was.” Immortality was not as much of a gift as most mortals would like to believe that it was, not for most vampires. Immortality had its own twisted way of making monsters out of once good people that even those with a strong stomach would become physically sick upon learning about. Grief, boredom, and exasperation had its way of convincing a person that certain actions were right, even though they knew they were wrong. Even mortal sadists could do horrific things, but given millennia to hone their craftsmanship and warped desires there was truly no end to the horrors they could unleash.

“It's really rare for a person to face who they are and not run from it — to not be broken by it. You’ve survived so much and you’ve come out of it a good person. We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better, don’t you think?”

“I...suppose.”

She gave her a reassuring smile. “You are not what you've done. Who you are right now, this moment, is who you choose to be. Everyone makes mistakes, Kami. Mortal, vampire, it doesn’t matter...good people make bad choices sometimes and genuinely bad people don’t feel guilt for their actions. You’ve made mistakes and you will make more mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won't be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I don't need to tell you that you can be better than all of the bad things that you’ve done — you already know you can.”

Ridiculously touched by what she had said, Kamilah leaned in and took her lips on hers. She tasted like sweet wine and chocolate covered strawberries, and as Kamilah’s lips slowly tumbled over hers she knew that her heart knew Anastasia was hers long before she ever realised it herself. Being with her was like coming home or being born or suddenly finding an entire half of herself that had been missing. They moved together, unending and wild and burning, and when Kamilah deepened the kiss, Anastasia giggled and went with her.

“Tell me your secret,” the ancient vampire whispered against her lips. “How is it that you always know exactly what to say to make me feel better?”

Anastasia leaned back, just enough that she could look in her eyes. She shifted her arm so she could brush Kamilah’s long hair back. Her delicate fingers lingering along her jaw. After a long moment, she spoke. "The only secret I've ever had in my entire life is that I love you." She gave her a slight smile. "It was the one thing I believed I'd go to the grave without voicing." 

“Just after I had turned you and we thought that it hadn’t took, I realised that it was the greatest joy and honour of my life to been to known by you,” Kamilah said, softly. The big blue eyes twinkling at her were so full of light that their loveliness almost stopped her heart. It was one of those times that she couldn’t quite believe that they had found each other across centuries of bloodshed and death, across oceans and kingdoms and war. “To call you my family. And I am grateful — more so than I can possibly say — that I lived long enough to find you...that I was given time with you. You are my salvation, Anastasia.”

“Kamilah—“

“I fell in love with you because even before you were a vampire, you were one of us — because you weren’t afraid of me, and you earned us many spectacular victories with your resourcefulness. More than once I felt Lysimachus’ spirit beside me when I was with you, and each time I could have sworn I heard him say, ‘If you don’t kiss her, you stupid girl, I will.’”

Anastasia laughed loudly at that. In truth, love was too weak a word for what she felt, for all she’d done for her. For what she felt for her. Even though she had been free of Gaius for long before Anastasia had even been born, it was her love that had truly made her realise just how badly she had been treated before, as her standards had become so low so had been genuinely shocked at how the then-mortal had treated her, as the freedom being with her granted had felt like a privilege and not an inherent right. And it was in the girl’s last moments of her mortal life that Kamilah had learned that it did not take a monster to destroy a monster — but light, only light was able to truly drive out darkness.

“Dance with me, Kami," she said, her voice sweet and musical through her giggles as she pulled Kamilah to her feet. The relaxing piano music that Kamilah had put on was perfect as they started in a slow sway, their bodies pressed flush together and their foreheads rested together. When Kamilah’s dark eyes met hers she forgot about the cold New York winter, and the stress of work, and all the chaos they’d survived — they all faded into nothing. She held her close and there was only the music and Anastasia, and in the face of all that had happened, it felt good, really good, to just breathe for a moment.

Her breath was warm on her neck as she bent her head, resting her cheek against her red hair. Kamilah’s heart beat so quickly, and yet she felt utterly calm and serene — as if she could have stayed there forever and not minded, stayed there forever and let the whole world fall apart around them.

It never ceased to be amazing to her, that one single life really did have the power to change the heart so much. Lysimachus had always tried to teach her that there are many types of strength beyond the ability to wield a blade and end lives, yet Kamilah hadn’t truly taken his words to heart until she’d crossed paths with Anastasia and found that a woman who’d seen just more than two decades of life spoke with the very same conviction as he had. She couldn’t help but wonder if, even in all of the despair and hopelessness she had felt in her life, she was never truly as alone as she felt. She wondered if she was just looking for her safe place — looking for Anastasia. Looking into her eyes, their hearts beating in time, the rest of the world quieted into nothing. In that moment, after more than two thousand long and restless years, Kamilah could finally exhale. She looked at Anastasia and realised that, at last, she was home.

\- fin.


End file.
